By “Producer”,  I mean  in the sense  of “Video Producer”.  I have  often told people that prior to the computer,  my “geekery” was in audio/video.  Now, webcast technology has brought Audio/Video and Web back together. 

Leo Laporte and his TWIT network of Webcasts,  and  The Gillmor Gang,  which also uses the Tricaster to do live Web conversations via Skype,  have  given me a motivation to get serious about video again,  after years of sporadic video hobbyist use (and mostly for special family occasions and vacations).  My initial baptism into video came when I bought my first VCR in December 1979,  and  soon after,  when I would rent a video camera and record some things in my youth ministry  activities.  I bought my first video camera soon after I started in my first full time youth ministry position,  and I envisioned helping the  youth group “do their own news”,  and learn to cover stories that would help them connect “church” with “mission” and ministry.  I wrote to Dennis Benson,  whose youth resources I had used (mainly his “Recycle” newsletter,  along with a couple of Catalogs by that name) and described my “news” idea, and he put it in his next newsletter.

Coincidentally,  it was Dennis Benson who was the one who drew me to United Theological Seminary and it’s “MA  in Religious Communication” program in late 1989.  Dennis along  with Ken Bedell were co-directors of the program,  and Ken became my advisor when I enrolled at United for the January 1990 course with Dennis where we created a show for “Passages”,  which was a radio show Dennis had produced for years.  But my focus quickly shifted from Video Production to Computer  Communication and online community during my experience at United.  It was during that time when PCs were becoming mass market items,  but still a bit expensive.

I ended up following a Web developer path,  moving to Nashville in 1997 to become the Web guy for a denominational Publishing House. I did that for 5 and a half years and soon after that,  was at a denominational communications agency in 2004 until the end of  October 2009.

The “Social  Media” craze had begun as I was leaving the communications agency.  As I sought out what my future was to be,  I jumped whole heartedly into the world of social media apps.  I had an iPhone within a month,  and I was becoming a “Tweeter” of all  things I had been blogging about (and I kept blogging as well,  and utilizing a WordPress blog plugin which tweeted a link to any blog post I published) . 

Around January 2010,  I realized that Leo Laporte had something in the Twit Network that I wanted to help develop for the church.  It seemed like the next and most appropriate step for me,  and incorporated some of my original passion for video.  Having had my interest in video production of the church migrate  into a new fond  passion for all things ONLINE COMMUNITY in the early 90s,  now the Web was sweeping up video as bandwidth capabilities grew and TV started getting distributed  online.

In April 2010 I bought a Canon HD video cam,  and some items to help jumpstart Webcasting (a mic,  on the recommendation of Leo to use  for audio,  as well as a little box that took a regular  XLR mic connection and output a mini-mic connector to plug into the camera’s mic input (also a requirement in Leo’s recommendation).

I bought a domain  name, communicast.TV, and added a tab tomy WordPress blog to signal my forray into the world of Webcasting.  My sub-title/mission statement for Communicast: 

“Webcasting  Our Conversations”

I have uploaded a few videos to YouTube,  and added a “YouTube widget” to my blog.  I was hoping  to find a way to acquire a TRICASTER (the device used by Leo and also by another of my favorite Webcasts,  The Gillmor Gang. Twit,  especially “This Week in Google”,  and  “The Gillmor Gang” serve as inspiration to me to develop and  produce Webcasts which provide similarly compelling content geared toward church folks,  giving them/us a way to include a large audience via the Web,  and even making this Webcasting a “rentable” channel.  I want to be an enabler and evangelist for the  kinds of interaction possibilities that in Webcasting just continues to grow in its ability to provide a compelling conversation.

Again,  much more  on  this to come.  I have a couple of “Webcast” and video projects I’m in the process of conceiving,  and have shot some footage to start.

Next up:   Developer.